


Sisterly Bonding

by whoneedsapublisher



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:21:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23934496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whoneedsapublisher/pseuds/whoneedsapublisher
Summary: Yang has been busy recently, but she finally has a chance to spend some time with her sister again.
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long
Comments: 3
Kudos: 80





	Sisterly Bonding

“Well, here’s to another hard day of work,” Yang said, throwing Ruby a can of coke. Ruby caught it with a little fumbling and cracked it open as Yang popped the cap off her beer with the edge of a nearby workbench.

“So, how have you been?” Yang asked, taking a seat next to Ruby and throwing an arm around her. “We haven’t gotten to talk too much lately.”

It had been a busy period. For whatever reason, Yang had been swamped with jobs the last few weeks, to the point where she was working seventy or more hours a week. She’d even had to turn away jobs for the first time since she’d opened the garage. Maybe she was getting popular.

Or maybe someone was running around smashing up so many cars that every mechanic in the city was busy. It wasn’t like she’d had a chance to check.

“So little sister,” Yang said. “How’s life been treating you?”

“Yang,” Ruby said, her voice grim. “Something terrible happened. I think I _actually_ got tired of working at one point during this month.”

Yang laughed.

“I’m serious, Yang!” Ruby said. “I usually love working on guns! But I just had so much to do lately that when someone brought in a stupid cheap little pistol that just needed a boring old spring replacement I caught myself thinking that I’d rather be at home!”

“That’s normal, Ruby,” Yang said, tousling her hair. “And I bet dad told you the same thing, right?”

“Maybe,” Ruby said, pouting a little. “But it’s never happened to me before! What if it’s a sign, Yang? What if I stop liking my job?”

“I don’t think there’s much chance of that,” Yang said. “You probably enjoyed the project right after that one, right?”

“Well, yeah,” Ruby said. “But that’s different! Someone brought in a _real grenade launcher_ , Yang! I’ve only ever read about those! Of course _that_ was exciting!”

Yang shook her head. “You guys get some pretty wild customers, huh? How’d they even get a permit for something like that?”

“I dunno,” Ruby said, shrugging and kicking her feet idly. She was still wearing those giant black and red boots she’d gotten years ago. If you looked carefully, you could see the oil and metal shavings that had been ground into them over years of use on a workshop floor. “Dad said the paperwork was all fine, though.”

“Well, I guess you can trust him on that,” Yang said. “Sounds like we’ve both been pretty busy, though.”

“Yeah,” Ruby said. “I’ve been working a ton since I’m on summer holidays. Dad says he’s not sure how’s he gonna manage without me once school starts again.”

“Tell him to hire someone else,” Yang said, rolling her eyes and taking a sip of her beer. Now that was something she’d missed with all the drawn out shifts that ended with her barely managing to eat dinner before she flopped into bed. There was nothing like a cold beer after a long day.

“If I do that, he’ll just say “Yang told you to say that, right kiddo? Tell her I’m not _that_ old yet.”, and mess up my hair again,” Ruby said, doing a fairly passable impression of their father. “Besides, _you_ haven’t hired anyone, right?”

“I couldn’t afford to before, but I’ll probably have to if things keep up like this,” Yang said with a sigh. “This it the first time in weeks I’ve closed up before ten. I’m totally swamped.”

“Guess that’s why we haven’t really seen each other in a while, huh?” Ruby said, looking down into her drink.

“Aw, Rubes,” Yang said, pulling Ruby closer. “You know I make time for you whenever I can. Just haven’t been able to make time for _anything_ recently.”

“What about Blake?”

Yang sucked in a breath between her teeth.

Blake.

Now _that_ was a subject she didn’t really want to be talking about with her little sister right now…

* * *

It had all _started_ fine. Yang went out to a bar on a Friday after work. She chatted with the bartender, greeted a few friends, did a little dancing. At some point during the night, a girl with jet black hair and sharp canines showed up, a twinkle in her eye and a tilt to her head. Somehow or another, she managed to be in a conversation Yang was having. Yang wasn’t really sure how that had worked, but she was a little tipsy by that point, so it wouldn’t have been too hard to slip in to her one of her chats.

The two of them hit it off quickly, but not _that_ quickly. Not _quickie_ quickly, to be specific. The two of them went home with a new number in their phone and a name to go with it, but they went home alone.

As it happened, they didn’t even need to use the number they’d gotten. Saturday night, both of them chose the same bar to get the hair of the dog, and this time Yang made conversation with Blake directly.

Blake was pretty different to Yang, in a lot of ways. Yang was fairly tall and pretty muscular; Blake was shorter than her even _with_ heels and was decidedly slender. Yang was a mechanic, and Blake was a history professor. Yang had been born in Patch, while Blake was originally from Menagerie.

Maybe there was truth to the idea of opposites attracting, though, because Yang couldn’t get enough of her conversations with Blake, and it seemed like it went both ways. When she asked Blake if she’d want to chat a little more over coffee sometime, Blake was happy to agree.

So they chatted over coffee once or twice, met for lunch a couple more times, and at some point their casual contact started to get distinctly romantic and both of them made it quite clear that they were into women in general and each other in specific.

Normally, that was not the point in a relationship where you’d start introducing the girl to your family. They’d been on maybe five dates total if you were willing to hold any arranged meetup to that standard, and only in the last one or two had it become completely clear that there was interest in them being more than friends. But when they were out to lunch once, Yang had gotten a call, and when she’d gone to hang it up, she saw it was from Taiyang, who was not in the habit of making idle calls.

“Sorry,” Yang said, flashing Blake an apologetic smile. “I gotta take this.”

Stepping outside, she picked up the phone. “What is it, dad?” she asked. “I’m kinda busy here.”

“Shit. How busy?” Taiyang sounded worried, which put Yang on alert.

“I can get away if I really need to, I guess,” Yang said, frowning. “Is something wrong?”

“I’m stuck outside town,” Taiyang said. “Guess I should have taken your advice about getting my engine looked at, cause it gave out on me while I was out picking up some parts.”

“Dad, I _told_ you I heard something rattling around in there,” Yang said. “Are you okay? Did you get off the road alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Taiyang said. “I called for a pickup, but it’s gonna be an age and a half before everything gets worked out, and I promised to pick Ruby up from her book club thing. Could you go grab her? I don’t want to leave her sitting out there for hours.”

“Alright, alright,” Yang said, letting out a sigh of defeat. So much for her date. “But next time I tell you to get your pickup checked out, do it, alright?”

“I will,” Taiyang said. “Sorry for botherin’ you with this, sunny.”

“Yeah, well, you can owe me one,” Yang said. “See you later.”

“Seeya sweetheart.”

Hanging up the call, Yang headed back into the restaurant.

“Everything okay?” Blake asked.

“Well, no one’s hurt, but my dad’s stuck outside of town,” Yang said, picking up her jacket and fishing out her wallet. “Sorry, but I gotta go and pick up my little sister.”

“That’s okay,” Blake said, waving for Yang to put away her wallet as she fished out a twenty and left it on the table. “Guess I’ll just head back to the school and get an early start on grading.”

She made a face at the thought, and Yang laughed.

“You look like you’re looking forward to it,” she teased.

“Oh, definitely,” Blake said, drily. “There’s nothing I love more than reading a paper written by someone who clearly didn’t do the reading and hopes I won’t notice.”

Yang chuckled nervously, and Blake narrowed her eyes as she slipped on her coat.

“Apologize to all the professors you did that to,” she said, and Yang laughed again.

“Actually, you walked here, right?” Yang said, as they headed outside of the restaurant. “Do you want a ride? Ruby’s book club meets at the university in the summer cause they won’t let ‘em on the highschool campus during break.”

“I’ll take you up on that, thanks,” Blake said. “Do I get I to meet your sister, then?”

“Sure,” Yang said, opening the door of her car and slipping into the driver’s seat, then popping open the passenger side door for Blake. “You’ll love her. She’s a nerd, just like you.”

Blake rolled her eyes as Yang grinned.

“You said she was working with your father during the summer holidays, right?” Blake asked as she fastened her seatbelt.

“Yeah, she’s always loved tinkering with guns,” Yang said, shifting gears and pulling out of the parking lot. No matter how much people talked up automatics, she was always going to be a stick shift girl. Taking apart cars for a living had a tendency to give you strong preferences about them, and Yang was definitely no exception. “I’m pretty sure she’d do it even if she wasn’t being paid.”

“What about you?” Blake asked.

“Would I work on cars even if it wasn’t a job?” Yang asked. After a moment of thought, she shrugged. “I’d probably tinker a bit, I guess. But Ruby would do it full time just for fun. She really gets into designing weird custom jobs too. Fantasy stuff, mostly. She has this frankenstein project she’s been working on for years, it’s some kind of sniper rifle with a giant bayonet that folds up into a rectangle when it’s not in use. Like flat packing furniture. She got her hands on some old hunting rifle years back and has been swapping out parts as much the law will let her ever since.”

“Sounds… a little distressing.”

Yang grinned, not turning away from the road. “Don’t worry, she’s not planning to do anything nefarious with it. I think she just wants to see if she can get it to balance properly. So what about you, Blake? Would you still show up at work if you won the lottery?”

“God no,” Blake said. “But I admit, I wouldn’t completely retire.”

“Oh yeah?” Yang said, raising an eyebrow.

“I think history is a really important subject that not enough people appreciate,” Blake said. “Knowing what led us to where we are and the context for people’s lives is worth preserving and passing on.”

That was one of the things Yang liked about Blake. She seemed pretty aloof a lot of the time, all snarky comments and wry smiles, but underneath that she had some genuine passion on certain subjects. When she talked about those, there was a fire in her eyes that Yang couldn’t help but be captivated by.

“But,” Blake admitted. “I’d probably hire someone to grade papers and write tests for me. And maybe schedule my lectures a little later in the day…”

“Not a morning person, huh?” Yang teased. 

“Let’s just say I drink a lot of coffee…” Blake said.

The drive to the university wasn’t long, and soon enough, Ruby came into view, her nose in a book as she leaned up against the wall by the university gates.

“Hey, kiddo,” Yang said, pulling up to her and rolling down the window. “I hear you need a ride.”

“Hi Yang,” Ruby said, looking up from her book and then recoiling a little in surprise. “Oh. Um, hi.”

“Hi,” Blake said. “You’re Ruby, right? My name’s Blake. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Blake’s, uh,” Yang hesitated for a moment, glancing over at Blake. Shit. They hadn’t really discussed labels.

“I’m someone she goes on dates with,” Blake said, giving Yang an amused look as she undid her seatbelt. “Thanks for the ride, Yang. I’ll give you a call later and we can work out another time to meet up, okay?”

“Alright,” Yang said. “Maybe we can come up with a catchier term than “person I go on dates with”, too.”

Blake flashed Yang a smile. “Maybe we can. Bye, Yang. It was nice to meet you, Ruby.”

And with that, she left, striding into the university confidently as she pulled her ID card lanyard out of her handbag and slipped it on.

* * *

On the ride home, of course, Ruby had bombarded Yang with questions about Blake. She’d always been curious about the people Yang dated, and she seemed to take a particular liking to Blake. Apparently she’d seen her around the university once or twice, too.

And so, even if Yang and Blake hadn’t said it, Ruby had decided that Blake was Yang’s new girlfriend. It wasn’t something Yang hated, but… well, as it happened, they’d decided to discuss labels over coffee, and that was when Yang had gotten busy, and had to postpone that date. And… still hadn’t found a time to reschedule it to yet.

“Uh,” Yang said, not meeting Ruby’s eye. “Well… like I said, I’ve been pretty busy…”

Ruby gasped. “You haven’t seen Blake since this all started?!” she asked, horrified.

“When would I have had the chance to?” Yang asked, sighing. “I’ve barely even made time to sleep, let alone go on dates.”

“But she’s your _girlfriend_ ,” Ruby said.

“She’s not really my girlfriend, exactly…” Yang said. “I mean like, we were just hanging out. Neither of us really agreed on it being anything exclusive…”

“That’s even worse!” Ruby said, leaping to her feet. “Yang, while you’re sitting here, someone could be stealing her away _right now_!”

Yang chuckled. “Stealing her away?” she asked. “Ruby, come on. I’ve been swamped. I’ve barely even talked to her in weeks. If she’s dating someone else by now it would hardly be them stealing her away.”

Ruby frowned. “But you really like her, right?” she said. “Wouldn’t you be sad if she was dating someone else?”

“I mean, sure,” Yang said, shifting a little uncomfortably. “But c’mon, it’s not fair to Blake to expect her to just put her love life on hold for me when we weren’t even really going out yet…”

“So call her!” Ruby said.

“What, now?” Yang asked, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s not that late,” Ruby said. “You could totally call her now.”

“Come on, this was supposed to be time for us to hang out,” Yang said.

“You shouldn’t leave a girl waiting just to play around with your little sister,” Ruby said, crossing her arms.

Yang sighed. “Fine, fine,” she said, pulling out her phone and calling Blake’s number.

“It’s ringing,” she said, as Ruby watched on eagerly.

“Hello?” Blake sounded a little surprised.

“Hey,” Yang said. “How have you been?”

“I’ve… been alright…” Blake said, slightly cautiously. “What about you? You said you were busy, and then I’ve barely heard from you since.”

“Uh, yeah,” Yang said, sighing. “Sorry about that. I really have been swamped the last few weeks. I guess everyone in the city decided to mess up their car at once or something. Maybe there was some kind of underground demolition derby that no one invited me to.”

Blake chuckled. “Well, I guess it would take a while to fix a car that was that badly broken,” she said. “I’ll make sure to give you a heads up if I hear anything about a sequel event.”

“Thanks,” Yang said.

There was a short, awkward silence.

“ _Yang!_ ” hissed Ruby. “ _Come on! Ask her out or something!_ ”

Blake snorted. “Is that the soft whisper of your own personal Cyrano I hear, Yang?”

“Uh, yeah,” Yang said, glaring at Ruby. “That would be Ruby, who is bad at whispering and doesn’t know how good your hearing is.”

Ruby mouthed an “oops” and grinned sheepishly.

“So, what’s the story behind that, Yang? Playing truth or dare?”

There was an edge to Blake’s voice. A suspicious tone underneath her playful banter.

“No!” Yang said hastily. Probably too hastily not to sound suspicious. “It’s not anything like that. I just finally got finished with work at a reasonable hour today, so I was hanging out with Ruby, since I haven’t seen her since everything got crazy. And well, your name came up…”

“And you decided you couldn’t wait one minute longer to talk to me?” Blake asked. This time the sarcastic edge to her voice wasn’t hidden at all. Yang winced.

“Uh, well, Ruby got it in her head that you were being stolen away, and that I should call you up before that happened…” she said. “Look, hang on a second, okay?”

Yang covered the microphone of her phone. “Alright, Rubes. Enough eavesdropping. You got what you wanted, I’m calling her. Now leave me to talk to her _without_ an audience, please.”

“Awww, Yang!” Ruby whined.

“ _Out!_ ” Yang said, shooing her away with a hand. “We can talk after, okay?”

“Alriiiiight,” Ruby grumbled, picking up her soda and wandering off towards the reception area. Once Yang heard the door close behind her, she went back to her call.

“Alright, Ruby’s gone,” she said, with a sigh. “So I can be real with you without my sister overreacting to it.”

“I’m not sure if I like the sound of that,” Blake said.

“All I’m saying is, if you’re dating someone else, I understand,” Yang said flatly. “We were only kind of going out for like a couple weeks, and then I ghosted you for most of a month, and I’m sorry for that, but I’m not gonna be mad at you if you moved on or anything.”

“Ahhh, and now it becomes clear why you sent the innocent little girl out of the room,” Blake said. “She’s the “this time she’s gonna be _the one_ ” type, huh?”

“Ugh, you don’t know the half of it,” Yang said. “I swear, half the time when I break up with someone Ruby’s more upset about it than I am.”

“So is that what this is?” Blake asked. “Are we breaking up?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Yang said. “I just don’t want this to be some awkward thing where an old flame shows up again and acts like “oh, of course you’ll take me back, we’re in love” and doesn’t even consider the idea that maybe you haven’t been waiting around for them.”

“I see. So, hypothetically, if I got tired of waiting for you to call and found someone else, this is where I’d tell you?” Blake said. “And you’d say “no hard feelings”, and we’d promise to stay friends but probably not talk again for a while?”

“Uh, yeah, something like that,” Yang said.

“Okay then,” Blake said. “What if, hypothetically, I happened not to have stumbled into the love affair of the century since our last date? Then what happens?”

“Then…” Yang said. “I think I ask if you wanna get dinner on Saturday, and let me treat you with all this extra money I’ve been earning lately.”

“Well,” Blake said. “Hypothetically, I might be interested. Maybe you should try it out.”

Yang grinned.

“Hey Blake,” she said. “Wanna get dinner Saturday? My treat.”

“Nope,” Blake said. “I have plans. My mother is in town over the weekend.”

Yang laughed. “You totally set me up, you asshole,” she said.

“I might have,” Blake said. “Hypothetically, I might still be a little mad at you.”

“Well, I guess that’s fair,” Yang said. “So, hypothetically, if there was still an overworked mechanic feeling a little guilty about not calling you… would you be able to free up your calender on Friday instead?”

“Hypothetically,” Blake said. “I might not have anything planned that day.”

“Hey Blake,” Yang said. “Wanna go out for dinner Friday? I know a nice little Italian place, and I’m paying.”

“That sounds good,” Blake said. “I’ll send you my address, and you can pick me up at eight.”

“Alright then. I’ll see you at eight on Friday.”

“Wear something nice, Yang.”

“I’ll come in my finest.”

Blake hung up, and Yang couldn’t help but grin.

She still had a lot of work this week. But she could finish in time on Friday.

Guess Ruby helped her out this time.

“Okay, Ruby!” she called out. “You can come back in!”

Ruby burst through the door like she’d been clinging to the other side just waiting for the signal, which she probably had. Doubtless she’d ask a million question about what had happened, and get all excited about it. But that was alright.

After all, it was all part of sisterly bonding, right?


End file.
